Roseball

Every year, one of the fraternities best known for their brains and brawn hosted a weekend-long bash in San Antonio. Any lady lucky enough to be invited to this annual spring event could expect nothing less than jealously from all of her peers. The giant road trip started on a Friday afternoon, where you’d drive a few hours with your best friends, eat dinner, stay over as a huge group at a frat family home nearby, and walk the Riverwalk all day on Saturday. The actual ‘Roseball’ took place on Saturday night, for an evening full of dinner and dancing at a nice hotel. Afterward, there were rooms blocked off for all guests to share and come/go as they pleased. The next morning, everyone would pack up in the car and head back north to Fort Worth.

I was dying to go. It just so happened that one of my first male friends at TCU invited me to come along as his date. We always were (and remarkably always will be) just good friends, so I was glad not to have the pressure of courting someone, what with the whole ‘hotel situation’ and all.

We set off on the road trip with two of my best friends and their dates. We stopped in Austin, TX to eat dinner at The Oasis overlooking Lake Travis. We spent the night at one of the frat guys’ family home. I remember at this moment having a weird feeling when I started putting pieces together that my date had a crush on someone else’s date. I wasn’t offended in the least because we weren’t romantically involved, but it was an interesting pyramid to observe him moving in on a buddies’ girl. The next day, I found myself walking solo behind pairs of couples as he plowed forward in pursuit, until I finally announced I would pass out if he didn’t feed me.

The actual party was such a good time. We all danced and enjoyed a cocktail or two. Tired done for the night, I retreated back to the room around midnight. My date stayed out later (wonder why?….). A couple other people sharing the room also returned and made their way to a bed. I remember my date coming into the room about two hours after I had left him. From the smell of things, he had done some liver damage while away. Knowing that our room companions were about as opposite of wild as one can imagine, this was already a funny scene. He loafed himself into the giant bed and turned off the lights.

I will never forget the sequence of events that took place next. There was about a minute of silence when everyone was very much awake in the room- but my date didn’t seem aware of any other human consciousness, let alone his own volume. To this day, I think he thought he was ‘whispering’ to me. He formed a spoon-like shape behind me. My entire spine tensed up. In a perfectly audible voice with witnesses present, he said, “Man, I really want some P_ _ _ _” I will let you fill in the remaining letters, hangman-style, though your only hint is that it has more to do with what I had than what he had. And I have to mention that he actually spelled the word out, letter for letter, instead of saying it outright. Yes, I got it. I heard laughter from across the room and a lamp was switched on by one of his frat buddies. This inappropriate private “conversation” had been vocalized to an audience. I remember asking what was ‘wrong with him.’

The next morning, I woke up in the exact same position I had fallen asleep in- guarded and stiff. We all traipsed back to the car and loaded up. I sat in the very back; my date drove. I’m sure he’s never experienced such mockery in all his life. Really, there are more polite ways to ask a girl out…but spelling out your intentions, literally, I guess that was clever.